Moscow — A Moscow court handed down a 20-year prison sentence Thursday to a Chechen woman who was earlier convicted of carrying a bomb that killed an explosives expert, Russian media reported.
Zarema Muzhakhoyeva, 23, was arrested in July after her strange behaviour drew the attention of security guards at a central Moscow restaurant, and a bomb was found in her purse. A bomb expert was brought in to defuse it, but it went off and killed him.
The incident followed a series of suicide bombings attributed to Chechens, including one at a Moscow rock concert five days earlier that killed 15 bystanders and two attackers, that left Russians shocked and fearful.
On Monday, a jury found Ms. Muzhakhoyeva guilty of terrorism, attempted murder and illegal possession of explosives. Prosecutors asked the judge to sentence the defendant to 24 years in prison.
Judge Pyotr Shtunder said he had taken into account Ms. Muzhakhoyeva's youth, her aid to the investigation and positive character references from her hometown, news agencies reported.
However, he said based his sentence "on the jurists' recommendation that Muzhakhoyeva does not deserve a reduced sentence, and taken into account the severity and cruelty of the crime," the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.
In an interview with the newspaper Izvestia in February, Ms. Muzhakhoyeva said she had decided not to go ahead with a suicide bombing and did her best to attract attention to herself without provoking punishment from minders she said were following her and whom she believed could detonate the bomb by remote control.
Ms. Muzhakhoyeva told the newspaper that she was hoping for an acquittal under a law lifting criminal responsibility from people who warn of a terrorist act. Her lawyer Natalya Yevlapova had thought the sentence could be five to six years, the Interfax reported.
